


Who Run The World (Girls)

by CloudAtlas



Series: Promptathon 2015 [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Exes, F/M, Female Friendship, Natasha Romanov Knows Everything, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 09:37:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4741520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudAtlas/pseuds/CloudAtlas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the prompt: <i>Clint is taken aback (read: horrified) when he discovers Natasha's befriended almost anyone in their life he's been in a relationship with. He's sure she's plotting or scheming something nefarious, while the truth is Natasha just thinks he has good taste.</i></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Clint groans again. "How do you <i>know</i> these things?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Run The World (Girls)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scribblemyname](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/gifts).



> Thank you to **inkvoices** for beta. Title (obviously) thanks to Beyonce.

The first thing Clint sees as he walks through the door is Bobbi, who's coming out of the kitchen with a bottle of wine, and he's so tired that for a moment he doesn't even twig that there's anything weird about that.

"Uh, hi," he says.

"Hi," she replies, smiling. "You're back early."

"Um, yeah," he says, scrubbing his hand through his hair and toeing off his boots. "Hill got good intel and there were less guards than we'd anticipated."

He carefully lines his boots up against the wall, because Natasha hates it when she trips over them when coming in the door, and that's when he remembers that this is  _Natasha's_ place, not his, and what the hell is Bobbi doing here? He turns to ask her but she's gone, and after a moment he decides that it was all a figment of his over-tired brain and stumbles into the en suit shower in Natasha's bedroom.

The hot water loosens his muscles and helps scour away the tacky post-mission feeling that always sets in, no matter how well the mission goes. He briefly contemplates just faceplanting onto Natasha’s bed and not moving for at least twelve hours, but he hasn't seen her since she left for Colombo and sleeping in her bed is always nicer when she's in it as well, so instead he pulls on a pair of jeans and his bullseye t-shirt and ambles into the front room.

Only to find Bobbi and Natasha chatting about Australian environmental policy. Because obviously Clint is still hallucinating. 

"Hello, Barton." Natasha is smiling when she looks over at him and she's the only person who has ever managed to make his last name sound like an endearment. Which isn't to say she can't make it sound like an accusation too. 

"Hi," he says and he can't help the smile that spreads over his face. He's  _missed_  her.

"I didn't think you'd be back today, so I invited some people over."

Clint glances at Bobbi. "I noticed."

"Eventually," Bobbi says, smiling, and Clint smiles back.

"Yeah, eventually."

Natasha passes him a glass of wine. "And just to let you know, I invited Laura. Lila's at a friend's."

Clint and Laura were together back in his circus days. They didn't last long – Laura was too grounded and Clint too restless – but they did have Lila together, and for a long time she was the only person Clint could honestly say he loved. She's sixteen now – smart, capable, and an amazing cellist – and Clint couldn't be prouder.

"Lila says ‘hey’," Laura tells him after hugging him hello. "And there's a concert in September that you and Natasha are invited to. She also says 'tell dad he’d better bring Nat to my fucking birthday this time or else I'm cutting the strings on all his bows.'"

"Since when did she swear that much?" he asks, grinning.

"We're her parents," Laura replies, rolling her eyes. "What did you expect?"

Because Laura might have been more grounded than him but she had still been a  _carnie_.

Sometimes he finds it a little weird that Natasha and Laura get on so well, but really it's weirder to find that Natasha, Laura,  _and_  Bobbi seem to meet up on a regular basis.

Maria is the next person to turn up, fresh from an extended version of the same debrief Clint has just escaped. She looks more approachable out of her SHIELD uniform and she smiles as she accepts a glass of wine from Bobbi.

"How many of us are there tonight?" she says as she curls up on the couch. Her toenails are bright green. It's strange that Clint notices that, but it's also strange that Maria paints her toenails green so he guesses it evens out.

"Nearly everyone can make it this time," Natasha replies and Maria's smile is pleased as she sips her wine.

But then it gets really weird; even weirder than Clint discovering that his current partner, his ex-partner, and his ex-wife regularly hang out together.

Jess Drew turns up.

Jess Drew is dark haired, works primarily between Washington and London, and Clint had a six month pseudo-relationship with her in the early days of his and Natasha's partnership. She's followed by Jen Walters; a member of the legal team with whom he got very drunk about three years ago and fucked in a bathroom of a bar in midtown, the two of them laughing so much they almost fell over.

He's sensing a pattern and Natasha smirks at him when he narrows her eyes in her direction. He'd think she was doing this to fuck with him, apart from the fact that his mission  _did_  wrap up early and no one could have predicted that.

Which means Natasha genuinely likes hanging out with almost every woman in SHIELD Clint has slept with. And Maria Hill.

Clint has never slept with Maria – Clint knows she'd say no without ever asking; she gives off the air of someone who has better things to be doing. Though to be fair she also gives off the air of someone who could be  _anything_. She could be married, she could be gay, she could be ace, she could be in some poly three-way relationship. And if Clint eventually gets invited into the small circle of people Maria trusts enough to tell, he's sure that his reaction will be  _yeah no, that makes complete sense_.

And then –  _and then_ – Carol Danvers walks into Natasha's front room, smelling of motorbike oil and slinging her leather jacket over the back of the last free chair, and Clint has to work really,  _really_  hard at not choking on the beer he’d fetched himself from the kitchen.

Because seriously, no one is supposed to know about that.

Before Natasha and after Jess, when Clint was in a slightly self-destructive place because his relationship with Jess had been a disaster and he was pretty much in love with his partner, he and Carol had had a  _thing._  The kind of thing that is ill-advised, hot as fuck, and which he never, ever,  _ever_  told anyone about because Carol is part  _something_  and can literally roast his balls with her bare hands. So if she says it's a secret, then  _it's a fucking secret._

Sometimes he forgets that Natasha is exceptionally good at finding out secrets.

Clint casts a fugitive look around him before quickly signing  _you are totally fucking with me right now aren't you?_ to Natasha.

_I don't know what you're talking about_ , she signs back, but she's grinning in a way that means she totally  _is_  fucking with him and is enjoying it very much.

So Clint sits on the couch and listens to Jess and Laura talk about teaching, Carol and Bobbi discuss the Syrian air strikes, and Jen argue with Natasha about the legal implications of torture (and wow, what a light-hearted girls-night-in topic that is, well done ladies). He extols the many and sundry virtues of Lila to Maria like the proud father he is, argues with Natasha about his beer and putting his feet on the table – as if  _any_  of the women present would be surprised – and then Carol shows off her new bike which makes him  _unspeakably_  jealous.

And when the jet lag and post mission tiredness finally crash down on him he leans against Natasha and lets their conversation and arguments wash over him, comforting in their familiarity.

They leave in stages. Maria first as she, like Clint, is exhausted from the recent mission, then Jen, citing some legal thing that's eating up her time like nobody’s business. Carol sets off around eleven, giving Jess a lift to Greenwich Village on the back of her bike, and Bobbi taps out near midnight, kissing Clint on the cheek and hugging Natasha goodbye.

Laura is visiting from Iowa, so Laura gets the spare room.

"I think I'm falling asleep standing up," Clint moans as Natasha manoeuvres him over the threshold of her bedroom. "Why did I do this?"

"Because you like us and you like boasting about your daughter."

Clint lolls his head to one side to grin at her.

"Lila is the best," he says before falling face first onto her bed.

"Yeah, she is," Natasha replies, running a hand through his hair before heading off into the bathroom to get ready for bed. "Also, get undressed. You're not allowed in the bed wearing jeans."

Clint wriggles inelegantly until he can drop his jeans and t-shirt over the side of the bed and is just getting under the covers when Natasha comes back out of the bathroom wearing one of his old SHIELD Academy t-shirts.

"You're a disaster," Natasha says fondly, presumably to the mess of clothes and sheets and  _Clint_  on the bed, but Clint's isn't bothered enough to open his eyes and check.

"Mmm," he says instead, rolling towards her slightly as she climbs in beside him.

She drops a kiss behind his ear and settles down and Clint is just about to drop off when it dawns on him.

"Oh my God," he moans over-dramatically and he feels Natasha tense up at the unexpected exclamation.

"What?"

"Oh my God," he says again, turning just enough to look Natasha in the eye. "You're friends with all my exes.  _Why_  are you friends with all my exes?"

"Is Jen an ex?" Natasha says, faking thoughtfulness while maintaining the tone that implies she knows very well that Jen and Clint have fucked.

Clint groans.

"And Carol?" Natasha continues, and her smirk is fucking  _audible._

"How do you even  _know_  about that?" Clint moans. "No one is supposed to know about that! Carol's going to fucking  _kill_  me."

Natasha cackles delightedly.

"Yeah, yeah," Clint grumbles. "You won't be laughing when I'm all crispy and on fire."

Natasha laughs some more before kissing Clint on the nose.

"You idiot," she says fondly. "The only reason I know you and Carol slept together is because you told me."

"When?" Clint says suspiciously, glaring blearily at her from where is face his mashed into the pillow.

Natasha grins. "About three seconds ago. Or, more accurately, earlier tonight when you did your squinty accusing face."

Clint groans and buries his face into the pillow.

"I don't have a squinty accusing face," he says, half muffled by the bedding. "Also, kill me now."

"Nah," Natasha says, curling around him. "I enjoy your pain too much."

"You're a terrible human being," Clint says mulishly and Natasha snorts.

Clint grumbles a little more but settles eventually, Natasha tucked under his arm and breathing gently into his neck.

"For the record though," Natasha says softly into his ear. "I'm not friends with 'your exes'." He can hear the quotation marks. "I am friends with the mother of your child and a selection of SHIELD’s most accomplished agents. You just happen to have slept with all of them."

"Except for Maria," Clint mumbles.

"Except for Maria," Natasha concedes. "So congratulations, Barton. You officially have great taste in women. Though May couldn't make it this time."

Clint groans again. "How do you  _know_  these things?"

There's a very pointed silence and Clint sighs. "It's because I told you just then, isn't it?"

"Yeah, Clint." He can hear the fond smile. "It is."


End file.
